


I'm Not Your Toy

by everythingevelyn



Category: Rick and Morty
Genre: Abuse, Abusive Relationships, Angst, Kinda, Origin Story, Revenge, Rick Being an Asshole, Torture, also no romance bw rick and morty!!!! im not gross, beth and jerry are background characters, blatantly wrong science, i wanted to add her but couldn't find a cohesive place, im not smart ok guys, like very not good, morty is just rlly smart and rlly sad, plz dont fact-check me, summer doesn't exist in this universe, very wrong biology information, wacky adventures, wow what else can i add
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-01
Updated: 2017-04-23
Packaged: 2018-10-13 16:44:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10517769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/everythingevelyn/pseuds/everythingevelyn
Summary: Origins for Evil Morty.I always wondered how he got to how he was, and why he hated Rick so much. Then I typed this out yesterday. Contains lots of sad times and barely put-together concepts. Morty is pretty much a genius in this universe.Inspired by https://8tracks.com/everythingevelyn/i-m-not-your-toy





	1. Part One

**Author's Note:**

> quick note about the writing style, there are 3 reasons why its so mechanical and to-the-point  
> 1-i wanted it to reflect morty's outlook as he's shaped into this world where he can only be unfeeling  
> 2-it came out having a very drabble-like feel to it to kinda wrap up fourteen years quickly and blend together at the end, to also mimic morty's outlook  
> 3-i wrote this on my phone during my econ lesson. it probably could be more flowery but whatever

 

 

 

Morty Smith was born on a Saturday. Rick, of course, was there.

  
He comforted Beth and gave her pain medications he’d made the night before, which she thanked him for profusely.

  
Morty was impossibly small when he was born. In his mind, Rick knew how small a baby was when it was born. He remembered Beth after she was born, crying and yelling and face a deep red.

  
But Morty was much smaller than she was. And he didn’t scream. He didn’t cry. He stared up at the world with wonder in his eyes, so unused to being outside the womb. A few fours after the birth, Rick held him for the first time. He was so very peaceful, sleeping like it was all he had ever been meant to do

  
Rick loved him.

 

///

 

Rick watched Morty when everyone else was away. Which was often.

  
Jerry had work, and Beth was still trying to complete her degree.

  
So Rick watched Morty.

  
For a few months, it was just them. Little tiny Morty, in his yellow onesie. He would crawl around the house and wiggle in Rick’s arms, trying to see the outside world. Though, Rick would never let him get too close.

  
After a while, Rick got bored. He invented robots to talk to Morty. He brought aliens he met on the street and imprisoned them for a day, telling them to change Morty’s diaper. He probably went through at least a thousand Meeseeks.

  
He didn’t know how he became bored, or why.

  
It reminded him of Beth’s mom. At first, he’d been in love, enraptured. He dedicated years to making her happy, and then one day it just fizzled out. He didn’t know how or why. He didn’t bother to think too much about it.

  
He ended of making four or five new ships during the day, dreaming up drunken ideas in his workshop while he heard Morty screaming in the other room. He traveled off planet when he couldn’t take it anymore.

  
Sometimes it hit him hard. He was a grandfather. Other times he'd end up drinking so much he would forget.

  
Beth never found out that Rick wasn’t the one taking care of her baby. Jerry suspected, of course, but he had no way of ever catching Rick.

  
But soon that wouldn’t even matter.

  
Rick came home on a bender one day, flask slipping out of his shaking hands as he dragged his feet into the kitchen. Morty was two years old.

  
Everyone was out so Rick felt no shame in grabbing one of Jerry’s low-calorie beers from the fridge and downing almost all of it in one gulp. He let out a low burp, the drink bubbling up in his chest and burning his throat. He shuffled over to the living room.

  
And then he heard it. When he had left the house six hours earlier, Morty had been screaming his head off, crying desperately for his grandpa.

  
And now, he was sitting placidly on the ground, giggling as he banged two large metal pieces together. He grinned up at his grandfather, who stared at the scene in front of him.

  
Morty Smith had taken apart the robot Rick had made him and all of the scattered parts laid across the living room. Taken apart wasn’t quite the right terminology. Morty Smith had ripped it to pieces with his bare hands.

  
He was two years old.

  
Rick looked at the boy for a moment longer, then crushed the beer can with his fist.

  
“Oh, I can work with this,” he smiled, picking up the laughing child and bouncing him.

 

///

 

Morty learns exceptionally fast.

  
Rick doesn’t quite remember when he had became interested in science, himself. He doesn’t quite remember much of anything before he got married. But he knows almost for damn sure it wasn’t this young.

  
Morty loves robots, he finds out. And he’s great with them. Sometimes Rick will be constructing something, tinkering away, and he’ll throw spare parts over his shoulder, not giving them a second thought.

  
One time, he’d been adding enhancements onto his portal gun, and when he turned around in his chair, Morty had created a dancing robot. He would poke it and then it would start up a new dance, twirling and jumping around.

  
It was a level of robotic engineering most college grads couldn’t achieve.

  
Morty thought nothing of it, simply laughing at the ridiculous thing he had made.

  
Morty was four when Rick started taking him on adventures.

 

///

 

Mostly it was small-scale stuff. Rick did have a heart after all. He wasn’t going to take a toddler to a planet made out of volcanoes. At least, he certainly wasn’t going to do it twice.

  
Morty’s speech patterns were just starting to develop, and Rick had thought for a little while that he might start to mimic him. Maybe it was some egotistical part of him that believed Morty might get more than his developing super-genius.

  
But when Morty started finally stringing three-four words together to make sentences, he did so easily. No stuttering, no ill-timed burps or even any hesitance.

  
Morty’s voice came out soft and careful, just like his nature.

  
Morty would never question Rick when they went on those trips, just do whatever Rick asked of him quickly and efficiently, never pausing.

  
Rick loved the little guy.

 

///

 

Rick couldn’t remember how he had done it. But there was a shouting match. Beth was yelling, angry and frustrated. Jerry gave a few points of his own, but Rick remembered not caring. He had been drunk. Or high. Probably both.

  
Morty didn’t need school, he argued. School would ruin him. How could he develop his clearly brilliant mind if he was forced to work with people a thousand times more idiotic with him. The only way Morty could truly grow, was if they let Rick take him with him, teaching him science and about how to travel the universe.

  
He probably guilt-tripped her too. Rick was always good at that. He probably said a lot of things he shouldn’t. He probably said harsh criticisms about her as a parent, bringing down her already lowered self-esteem.

  
But yeah, he couldn’t remember.

  
Eventually, he wore her down enough. The power dynamic between the father and his daughter had always been there. She lived, through wine and tears to please him, afraid because of the abandonment issues he'd forced on her years ago. Rick didn't like to think about it.

  
And now he had permission. Permission to raise Morty and shape him into the smartest human to ever come from planet Earth. Besides him, of course.

  
Morty was six years old.

 

///

 

It was six months later that Morty got injured for the first time.

  
It was Rick’s fault.

  
Rick knew it was his fault. Morty knew it was his fault. Morty had enough awareness to realize what drunkenness was. He understood that his grandpa was not a good person.

  
So when Morty got shot in the leg, destroying his kneecap and sending him straight to the ground, he did not blame the Corflox that held the gun. He blamed his grandfather.

  
But he was also silent. He did not cry, he did not shout. He simply waiting on the ground for hours, waiting for Rick to finish his business dealing with the Corflox who had shot him.

  
Rick exchanged pleasantries with said Corflox. Morty watched from the ground as the two shook what might have been hands. They laughed and joked with each other, Rick casting a few uninterested glances at Morty’s broken form.

  
Morty, for the first time, felt like a hindrance, a burden for being shot. He was now Rick’s inconvenience, no longer the wonder-boy he proudly proclaimed to the stars. He could not fix his own destroyed body, and therefore all of that respect he'd gained from being a genius was lost.

  
He looked away from the two figures and stared at the alien stars in the alien sky. A tear leaked out of his right eye, a stupid function he couldn’t turn off. The deep, burning, pain ripped through him, but he never made a sound.

  
Another hour passed before Rick got back to him. He injected something into Morty's leg, fixing it within seconds. The pain was gone immediately.

  
Morty refused to glare at him, but he knew Rick could have done that hours ago. And he had chosen not to.

  
“Come on,” Rick said, his word’s gruff as he shot a portal to take them home. Morty said nothing when they walked back into the house. When Beth asked them how their trip was, voice cheerful and full of hope, Morty did not speak but silently went up to his room while Rick regaled her with fantastic stories. He relayed lies about how daring he was, how he saved Morty for this monster, and how nothing went wrong.

  
Morty sat down at his desk and stared at the wall for a minute. Then he started sketching. He had a new idea he wanted to construct.

  
They would celebrate his seventh birthday two weeks later.

 

///

 

Rick wondered what he thought would happen when he took a kid with him. Did he think he’d get a plucky sidekick? Someone to laugh at his jokes, vy for his attention, someone he could save from sticky situations, then take him out for ice cream at the end of the day?

  
Morty wasn’t like that.

  
The boy was silent most of the time, cautious for the most part. Whenever he did speak, he might as well have been silent, with what little he said. Rick remembered when he was a baby, screaming for his grandpa to come home. Now, he would reluctantly accompany him on his zany escapades. More often than not, Morty was the one getting them out of bad situations. He would whip something up fast that would transport them off planet. He’d invent translation devices in the drop of a hat, or work out peace treaties with cannibals or mass-murdering government officials. Sometimes both.

  
Morty was always calm and levelheaded, and Rick started to resent him.

 

In the beginning of it all, he’d tried to take Morty to places to impress him. He made things Morty would stare at in wonder and ask him “ _How? How? How_?”

  
And he thought it would always be like that. When Morty asked him how he made things, Rick had always assumed he was just so impressed because he would never be able to do the things Rick could.

  
But Morty asked “ _How_?” because he wanted to make the same things Rick did. And he wanted to make them better.

  
So he did.

  
Sometimes Rick would stumble into the garage to grab something at odd hours of the night and would find Morty hunched over one of his inventions, screwdriver in hand as he changed it, improved it, understood it better than Rick had when he’d made it. More than once Rick had knocked on Morty’s bedroom door, ready to drag him across the stars only to find Morty passed out on his desk, designing or piecing together some new project. An AI robot to hand Rick flasks full of whiskey, vodka, tequila; a chessboard that always let white win, no matter how the pieces were moved; an invisibility-cloaking box, or something else that seemed both nonsensical and supremely useful.

  
Rick, at first, thought the kid was doing it to impress him. But as years went by and Morty no longer waited for Rick approval, as he would no longer share his ideas with his grandpa, Rick knew he wasn’t doing it for anyone but himself.

  
So, in response, he got careless.

 

///

 

Morty started getting more and more injured. It was never directly Rick’s fault. But they both knew he always could’ve prevented it each time. Morty never blamed him, at least out loud. He kept silent when he’d come home with bruises or cuts. Morty would make up some excuse to Beth, claiming it was his own fault, never Rick’s, which she would accept with a placid smile. Jerry was barely around enough anymore to question what happened with his only child and his father-in-law.

  
But sometimes Rick would see how Morty looked at him, and he knew that Morty blamed him.

  
Still, Rick did not let up. Instead, he pushed him harder and harder.

  
He raised the stakes on each adventure, he made Morty try even more. He never allowed him a moment’s peace.

  
Maybe Rick just wanted him to crack a smile. Or yell, scream at him. Lose his temper and cry. He wanted Morty to lose control, to break down. He wanted to see the boy change from the emotionless shell he’d turned into.

  
But he never did.

  
Sometimes Morty would look at him on those rides home, something in his eye just a little bit defiant. He knew what Rick wanted from him, and he would never give in.  
That just served to piss Rick off even more.

 

///

 

One night, a Saturday, Rick stumbled into Morty’s room while he was sleeping. Surprisingly, the kid was in his bed, asleep. Unsurprisingly, he awoke silently, looking at Rick in his doorway with eyes that were somehow both curious and bored.

  
Rick left the lights off as he walked over to Morty’s bed. The flask dripped onto the carpet as he waved it around and moved towards the boy.

 

“What is it now, Rick?” Morty asked, voice level and unchanging, if not a little annoyed.

  
“Can’t a grandfather just want to see his grandson, M-M-Morty?” He stuttered out, grinning in a way that wasn't friendly at all.

  
Morty looked at him, now truly annoyed.

  
“It’s two in the morning, Rick.” He said without pause, leaving Rick to wonder how he seemed to supernaturally know the time after just waking up. He didn’t bother looking for a clock to check if he was right.

  
Rick just smiled again, and then leaned down.

  
“Who the f-f-fuck are you?” He whispered at the brown-haired kid in bed.

  
Now Morty looked genuinely confused. Before he could breathe out a “What?” Rick had pinned him back against the bedpost by his neck, nearly blocking out his air supply as he pressed onto his throat.

  
Morty sputtered against his fingers, hands reaching to grasp his Rick’s wrist.

  
“What are you? Some sort of fucking robot? The Federation make you to spy on me? Are you gonna kill me?” When Morty didn’t respond to his drunken questioning, rum-flavored spit flying in his face, Rick pushed him back harder, then let go.

  
Even then, Morty reacted little, just raised his hand to his neck, rubbing at the sore spot. He didn’t even acknowledge Rick for a moment.

  
“I’m your grandson,” he said after a moment. He didn’t look at Rick but the old man stared at him, suspicion filling him to the brim. “I’m Morty.” He finished, hand leaving his neck to rest gently on the bed again.

  
Rick burped, and then let out a laugh.

  
“Yeah,” he said, then left.

 

///

 

Morty was eight and a half when he first met an alternate version of himself.

  
He was unimpressed.

  
Rick had gone to another dimension where socks had never been invented to steal that reality’s Rick’s invention that made it possible to see the perspective of any version of yourself in any reality. He took Morty along for the ride, barely giving him any explanation before they crash-landed onto a front yard near-identical to his own.

  
The Morty in that reality was just another fumbling eight year old. He stuttered at Morty, looking shocked and panicked at seeing his double. Morty just looked at him, uncaring and disappointed. He said nothing to his dim-witted doppleganger, instead wandering around the house and then walking back into the space cruiser, waiting for Rick to finish up whatever he was doing (probably physically or verbally berating this reality’s Jerry).

  
When Rick clambered into the car, a large pair of white goggles in his hand, he started up the cruiser and took off, muttering something about how he hated some council. Morty wasn’t paying attention to that.

  
When about five minutes had gone by, Morty spoke up.

  
“Why was that Morty like that?”

  
Rick nearly crashed into an asteroid that had been floating by. He was so unused to Morty starting conversations, or even speaking full sentences to him. He was especially unused to Morty asking questions, admitting he didn’t know something.

  
“Like what?” He grunted out, facing the windshield again. Morty looked at him, expressionless. He watched as his grandfather avoided looking in his direction.

  
“He wasn’t...like me.”

  
“Oh, you mean he was dumb?” Rick chuckled, pulling his flask out of his lab coat pocket. “Yeah, most realities have Morty's with the mental capacity of a brick.” He took a deep swig. “It cancels out my brainwaves, which makes Mortys,” he casted a glance at his grandson, “You, vital, since your dumb waves cancel out my genius ones.”

  
Morty processed the information silently, looking away from the blue-haired scientist to watch the stars pass them as they traveled through space.

  
Still, it was the longest conversation they’d had in years, and the most engaged Morty had been with him in a very long time, so Rick wasn’t letting it go just yet.

  
“You’re the only one, I think. I mean, I’ve never seen any other instance of a genius Morty.” He added.

  
Morty’s eyebrows furrowed as he looked back at Rick. His eyes followed Rick’s flask as he took another drink, finishing it.

  
“What does that mean, Rick? About me?”

  
Rick looked disturbed at the question.

  
“Fuck if I know.”

 

///

 

As each day passed Rick wondered if Morty was real. There were days when he would stare at him, wondering if wires were hidden underneath his skin.

  
It wasn’t hard to implant false memories. Had he really seen Morty being born? Or was it just some idea that had been forced into Rick’s brain to make him attach himself to the kid.

  
Was Morty his own flesh and blood? Or just an imitation. Sometimes he’d travel to other realities just to watch the kid do normal things. Attend school, express emotions, stuff like that.

  
Then he’d return home to find Morty tinkering away, barely glancing at him with lifeless eyes, bags growing underneath.

  
Some days, Rick would just pass him by, never talking or acknowledging each other. Sometimes, he’d take them on adventures that’d last days or weeks. Morty barely reacted to anything anymore. He’d mainly sigh sadly at Rick whenever Rick would order him around, then do whatever he asked. Sometimes Rick would do something stupid and reckless just to see if Morty would catch him. He’d test Morty constantly, breaking countless Galactic Laws just to see if Morty might stop him or try to protect himself from whatever harm Rick had thrust him into this time.

  
Morty always went along with it. He’d clear up whatever mess Rick had made, give him a disappointed look, and then drive the space cruiser back home, Rick most likely throwing up out the window, or just onto his own lap.

  
One time, Morty had a cut along his forehead as he piloted them back home, the blood slowly making it's track down the side of Morty’s face. He didn’t acknowledge it, just continued driving.

  
Rick stared at the crimson liquid, how realistic it looked as it stained Morty’s skin. He reached a hand up from where he was lying in his seat and smeared it on Morty’s cheekbone, bringing his fingers close to his face to stare at it.

  
“Beautiful animatronics,” he muttered, and passed out a minute later.

  
Morty glanced at him, but he now knew better than to question his grandfather when he made remarks like that.

 

///

 

Rick started getting high every day, stumbling around the house and grabbing Morty by the back of the neck. Sometimes he’d yell at the kid, demanding he do this or that for him. Other times he’d whisper nonsense at him, growing frustrated when Morty just looked at him, unable to interpret his coked out requests.

  
Rick could go days without seeing Beth. He wondered if she really existed. Maybe this Morty had made her up just so he would trust him more.

  
Beth would sometimes swim into his vision, concern draping over her words. He’d placate her with empty excuse as he sobered up with his face pressed to linoleum floors. (“Just a touch of the flu, Beth, honey.” “I think I ate something I shouldn’t have, sweetie.” “Just your father being an idiot and hitting his head on something again.”) Then he’d burp or stutter out a joke and Beth would laugh, and then fade away from his sight. He would always wonder if the interactions were real. (Was Morty just adding more projections of Beth to make Rick trust his reality again?)

  
He could no longer remember what day it was.

 

///

 

Morty was ten, and Rick was driving them from some diner in space. Morty no longer bothered to remember the names of places. He no longer cared about Rick’s dumb explanations for going here or there. It always stemmed out of the same place, Rick wanted to go there so they went, no matter what Morty wanted.

  
It never mattered what Morty wanted.

  
They landed softly in the garage, for once.

  
Morty slowly got out of the cruiser, his bones aching and body protesting. His ribs were bruised, he knew. He could point out and name the bones that were slowly cracking in his body, he’d learned how to fix his body long ago when Rick made him like this.

  
Of course, it wasn’t Rick directly. But it was always Morty getting hurt, and Rick escaping without a scratch.

  
“I’m done, Rick.” He said, slowly, carefully. For once, he couldn’t predict how Rick would react. But he also didn’t know what else to do.

  
The blue-haired scientist turned around to look at the boy.

  
He saw how broken he was. He noticed the bags under his eyes coupled with bruises and scratches, he could see the blood leaking out of Morty’s left shoe. He could understand why the boy never wanted to see him again.

  
But he never imagined he’d hear him say it.

  
“No more adventures. No more dragging me out in the middle of the night. I need a break. I-I don’t want to live like this.” The stutter shocked Rick so much he wondered if it had ever happened before, but he had just never noticed it. Morty was practically begging.

  
It pissed him off.

  
“No,” he said, then turned around back to his bench.

  
He knew Morty was still standing there, holding his nearly fractured right arm in his left. He knew Morty was staring at him, shocked and probably heartbroken.

  
Was the stutter added because Rick was becoming too suspicious? Did this “Morty” think adding that layer to his speech would make Rick think he was real? Was the beginning and the emotion catching in Morty’s voice just another line of programming so that Rick’s fears and paranoia would be extinguished?

  
He felt Morty take a step towards him, but he moved before Morty could get any closer.

  
He closed in on him, grabbing him by the shoulders and pushing him against the wall. The tears he might have imagined in Morty’s eyes were gone, replaced by a disappointed expression.

  
“I have to watch you.” He muttered, staring at the boy’s face, hoping to catch a glitch or anything, anything to feed into his growing obsession. “You’re too dangerous.”

  
Morty stood there for another moment, waiting to see if Rick would elaborate. When he didn’t, Morty sighed and then pushed Rick off of him with his one good arm. He walked out of the garage and went upstairs into his room to heal his bones and stop the bleeding. He didn’t give Rick’s words a single thought.

 

///

 

Morty never asked Rick to leave him behind again.

  
But as Rick’s paranoia started to grow, Morty’s resentment and bitterness festered in his chest, and started to swallow him whole.

 

///

 

Rick had taken him to some alien planet and abandoned him in a robotics store cities wide and countries tall. Morty no longer cared what Rick did. If he left him Morty could always make his way home by himself, it was never that hard. He was twelve years old.

  
Rick was at a counter, talking about his latest project he was building, an AI that could detect other AI’s. He hadn’t told Morty about it.

  
The attendant was giving him advice, which Rick surprisingly found himself listening to. She was orange, and looked more like an alligator than a human, and told Rick about their discounts as Rick explained his side-project.

  
“What’s it for, anyway?” She asked finally. Which was a valid question, as it was a weird thing to make.

  
“I just- I have some people in my life, and I need to confirm if they’re people, y’know?” He managed to minimally stutter out his words, but he still felt nervous. He realistically knew Morty was no where near him, but always felt unease when he couldn’t see him. The paranoia was always swirling around underneath his skin, making him twitch and stutter.

  
“You could always just check behind the eyes, you know.” She informed him, ringing up his total.

  
“Wh-What?” Rick asked incredulously. He’d never heard the expression.

  
“Yeah, that how you check if someone’s nuts and bolts. We had a big crisis a few years back, government sending in thousands of robots to spy on civilians. The gear-people always had wires in the backs of their eyes. That’s how you knew.” She read his total and he shoved some form of money at her, not totally sure it was accepted as currency in this system. He ran out the door with everything in plastic store bags before he could hear her protests.

  
Once he reached the cruiser, he saw Morty waiting patiently inside. He didn’t look over at him when he shoved all of his bags in the backseat.

  
But, as the ride went on Rick found himself looking over at Morty, focusing intently on the eyelids that held those expressionless eyes. What secrets they held behind them.

  
The cashier’s words echoed through him.

 

///

 

As Morty became less of a person to Rick, he started to revolve around Morty. His life became the kid, constantly checking in on him, hovering over him.

  
Every movement the twelve-year-old made was stored in Rick’s mind. Anything he did, no matter how innocent was just further proof of what Rick had suspected for years.  
Morty wasn’t real.

  
He couldn’t be. He was a robot of a person. Wires instead of veins, electricity instead of a heartbeat. Rick knew this. He knew it for a fact, now.

  
If only he could prove it.

  
He watched the boy do normal things around the house. He woke up, he would do his and Rick’s laundry, he would do whatever Rick asked without hesitation, and then whenever he was done, or Rick got incoherent, he locked himself back in his room, and no one was able to get in.

  
When had Morty put locks on his door?

  
Rick thought back, trying to remember when they weren’t there. The latest he could figure was a year and half ago. Huh, weird.

  
There had only been one instance between talking to that cashier and the months that followed that Rick had doubted that Morty was fake. Only one time that he had thought that maybe Morty was his grandson, his only grandson, sweet and new and human, just like anybody else.

  
Morty was getting something out of the fridge, and Rick was behind him, without him noticing. He leaned over, and reached past Morty’s neck to get something out of the middle shelf.

  
When he did that, Morty flinched.

  
Morty flinched when his hand came too close to his neck, and then he grabbed something at random and walked out of the kitchen-quickly.

  
His feet moved mechanically, but Rick noticed there was almost a nervousness to the movement.

  
He couldn’t think of why a robot would do that. There was no reason.

  
He shrugged, then stopped thinking about it.

 

///

 

It took Rick a year and a half to get all the equipment for the procedure. There was a lot of preparation involved. It also required a large amount of sneaking around, as he hadn’t wanted the Morty-bot to catch onto what he was planning.

  
The first step was tying up loose ends.

 

///

 

Morty had never felt that close to his parents. Another thing he could blame Rick for.

  
As much as he despised him, he was all he had. Again, Rick’s fault.

  
Morty was entirely alone. He was left with a disgusting, slobbering, paranoid, abusive old man who threw him around for kicks and abandoned him when he got too boring. But he was the one constant. Whether intentional or not, Rick Sanchez had alienated Morty from his family. He couldn’t remember the last time he had talked to his father. Some days he couldn’t even remember what he looked like.

  
Beth wasn’t much better. Rick had taken on the role of Primary Caretaker since Morty was an infant, making Beth’s place in Morty’s life almost irrelevant. She had given up trying to do things with Morty, too afraid of overstepping her bounds in the complicated relationship between the grandfather and his grandson.

  
And so, Beth, in her own way, had sealed his fate. She way not have been aware of the abuse, but she still allowed it to happen.

  
Too afraid of Rick.

  
Morty swore he would never fear Rick. He turned that childlike fear into a mature, simmering rage.

  
If Morty had been raised a normal child, that rage would have shown up in inappropriate ways. He would yell at Rick, he would try to kill him with his fists, he would throw things, smash furniture, go on a rampage.

  
But Morty had not been raised a normal child.

  
So, instead, Morty focused all of his anger into one, simple outlet. A plan that had been half-forming in the back of his mind ever since he had met that alternative Morty. That lesser Morty.

  
He focused on revenge.

 

///

 

Rick got rid of Beth and Jerry first. Phase One.

  
They were so annoying at this point anyway, Rick felt absolutely no guilt over removing them. Plus they’d been brainwashed out of their minds. He knew they’d protect Morty with their lives, Beth might even risk losing him just to keep Morty. How sad.

  
How sad they couldn’t see that Morty was just a projection, an image with no life.

  
He rewrote their memories, made them believe they never had a son. It fairly easily, once he’d gathered the right technology. He’d been experimenting with it small-scale for months. At first he used it to make Beth forget her own middle name, which took about seven tries before it worked. After that he had to knock them out and immerse himself in their memories in order to rewrite them. He took the technology and blocked fourteen years of memories from both her and Jerry’s minds. It was much easier than expected, once he got started. Neither Beth nor Jerry had an overflow of memories centered around Morty. That was a little weird to Rick. But he didn't linger on it.

  
But after that he sent them off, made them both have the deepest urge to move out to California, nearby both a horse ranch and a vineyard. He knew Beth would like that. Maybe they’d pop out a real kid this time, have a girl or something.

  
The Second Phase was keeping Morty occupied. The Beth/Jerry situation took the better part of a day so Rick sent Morty out on errands to the far reaches of the galaxies, knowing it would keep him occupied at the very least for half a week. But then again, this Morty could very well surprise him.

  
Once his daughter and son-in-law had moved out quickly and started heading west, he started setting everything up in the garage.

  
In two hours everything was ready to go and Rick was feeling good. For the first time in years, he finally felt like he was confronting those thoughts that had been running over his brain for years. He was finally going to confront the truth and he was going to be proven right. As usual.

  
He settled back in a chair faced the front window and cracked into Beth’s boxed wine. Her collection was expansive and it took a few hours to make a dent as he waited.

  
Morty flew home the next day.

 

///

 

He knew something was wrong the second he touched down. For one, Jerry’s car wasn’t out front even though he knew he didn’t work on Saturdays. Secondly, the garage door wouldn’t lift, even when he repeatedly pressed the button on the remote.

  
Morty slide out of the space cruiser, parking it in the driveway. He left Rick’s groceries in the back of the car, figuring the old man could get them himself if he wanted them so bad.

  
The second thing Morty noticed was that the entire street was quiet.

  
Not even a bird was chirping. None of the neighbors were out. In fact, it looked like every window in the street was dark.

  
The ominous feeling Morty had wouldn’t go away. Nearly all of his instincts were urged him to get back into the cruiser and leave, never come back.

  
But, despite all that, Morty walked towards the house. Just before pushing open the door, he looked back.

  
The cruiser was just sitting there, innocently. He could go, he could leave. Rick wasn’t outside, he couldn’t stop him. Morty could leave this eternal hell of a life, abandon his plans for revenge and go live a life a billion light years away.

  
Morty could barely even imagine it.

  
He turned the knob and walked inside, the smell of red wine filling his nose. He turned to his left and saw at least twelve boxes thrown about the ground, leaking out and staining the ground. His parents must’ve been fighting. Morty couldn’t find it within himself to care. He turned away from the scene and started towards the stairs. He wanted to sleep.

  
Ironically enough, he would get his wish.

  
Before he could even get to the stairs he heard Rick’s clumsy, drunk footsteps. He turned around to confront the man, wondering what sort of new punishment he would instill on him next, what new errand he'd have to run this time. Before he could even turn around completely, he felt something enter his neck.

  
Morty thrashed, protesting the invasion into his skin, but it was too late. Rick had already removed the needle, and was staring at him from above as Morty slowly fell to the ground.

  
“You..you stabbed me…” Morty started to comprehend what had happened as Rick looked at him dispassionately, needle still in hand.

  
The drug took effect in less than a minute, and Morty was unconscious.

  
Rick threw the needle somewhere behind him, then gathered up Morty by his ankles. He dragged his body through the house, ending up in the garage.

 

///

 

When Morty woke up, it was still Saturday, and Rick was still standing above him.

  
The first thing he noticed was that there was something cold against the right side of his face. The second things he noticed was that his wrists and ankles were tied down.  
He was on a surgical table.

  
“Hello, M-M-Morty,” Rick grinned, seeing him open his eyes.

  
“What the hell is this, Rick?” He asked, hands curling into fists as he started to move against the bounds.

  
“Just something I like to call, ‘I was right the whole time, bitches!’” Rick threw his hands into the air, but the move lacked humor, felt forced. Like he’d been practicing.  
Morty struggled against the metal cuffs, figuring he could at least try to slip out.

  
“Nope!” Rick yelled and hit a button on a remote sitting innocuously on a table beside Morty. Once the button was hit, the cuffs tightened, and Morty stopped struggling.

  
“Fine, so what now?” Though his voice came out nonchalant, Morty felt a small sliver of panic, an emotion he hadn’t touched upon in years, creep into the base of his spine. He looked over onto the table and saw surgical tools. Scalpels and scissors and ominous looking contraptions sat there, glinting up at Morty as they rested.

  
Rick slapped some surgical gloves onto his hands, no doubt stolen from Beth. Morty watched, that squirmy feeling growing in his chest, swirling around his wrists. He was effectively trapped. And he didn’t think he could get out of it.

  
And yet, unlike all those times before when Rick shoved him headfirst into danger, when Rick put his own self-worth before Morty’s, he couldn’t find it within himself to let this happen.

  
He thrashed around, to little avail. For the first time, Morty did something without thinking out a plan. He didn’t know how he was going to get out of this situation. He just knew he had to.

  
Rick stared down out him with his blase expression, arranging the surgical tools on the table.

  
“Al-Alright,” He grunted out, the smirk still working it's way onto his lips.

  
“Time to start.”

 

///

 

Morty first felt discomfort.

  
He thrust his head back in forth, turning around against Rick as he tried to steady him. His neck started to hurt but it barely even registered in his brain.

  
Rick sighed as he looked down at the boy, thrashing against him on the surgical table. He felt nothing for the struggling fourteen-year-old. How could he feel sympathy for a machine?

  
Rick’s left hand came down and pinned Morty down by the chin, pressing the back of his head against the metal. Morty felt the cool metal table sting against the back of his neck.

  
With his other hand, Rick forced the wire speculum onto Morty’s right eyelids. The uncomfortable device held Morty’s eye open, and he had never before felt such an intense urge to blink.

  
His other eye worked in panic, blinking profusely as he started to get belligerent.

  
“What the fuck is, Rick? What the fuck are you doing to me?!” He yelled, voice reaching octaves it had never been to before. His mouth tried to bite at the fingers forcing his head down. This was pure, human impulse.

  
“Of course, under threat of destruction your emotion setting finally kicks in to try and guilt me into stopping.” Rick muttered as he worked, more to himself than to actually explain to Morty what was happening. “Seems you did have those emotions, buried deep for self-preservation.”

  
“I’ll fucking kill you-what the fuck are you doing?-” Rick brought his hand away from keeping Morty down to raise a blowtorch and a metal spoon. Morty fell silent when he lit the torch, the fire burning loudly in the silent garage. He brought the flame over to the large spoon, and lit the metal, burning it red-hot. Morty watched as Rick stared at it, a sick gleam growing in his eye.

  
Finally, he turned off the gas and held the smoldering utensil in his gloved hand, gripping it by the rubber handle.

  
“Time to go, Morty-bot,” he said in a voice that might even be close to affection. He brought the spoon ominously close to Morty’s overexposed, drying eye. “It’s scooping time,” he sung.

 

///

 

Morty had never been more aware of the fact that Rick had never had any medical training in his life.

  
Rick was, putting it lightly, a sloppy, lazy, uncoordinated asshole who coasted on his luck and genius to invent things for purely selfish reasons. He never prepared for things; he never looked up proper procedure. He simply acted without thinking, ignoring the consequences when they came.

  
It had never really been a hindrance to Morty, since he had been acutely aware of Rick’s nature since he was a toddler. He knew how to evade Rick’s moods, he knew how to take care of himself when the time came, and how to save his grandfather whenever he took things too far.

  
But this one time, Morty could do nothing.

  
He could do nothing but let out the loudest shrieks he had ever heard. He could do nothing but scream and scream and scream. He could do nothing but feel this white-hot pain burning through his face, paralyzing him in fear, torturous and sloppy.

  
Rick didn’t know what he was doing. He dragged tool after tool into Morty’s eye, cutting and poking around in Morty now realized was his mess of an eye.

  
At first, he was painfully aware of whatever his grandfather was pressing and piercing into his eye. He had to see it, as it was all in his eye. Sometime later, Rick ripped into his cornea enough that Morty lost all the function in his eye. His left eye, however still watched in terror as Rick persisted, sometimes reaching into Morty’s socket to touch something with his gloved-fingers.

  
Rick muttered while he worked, not that Morty could hear him over his own screams.

  
But, maybe thirty minutes in, maybe hours, Morty stopped screaming. He stopped screaming when Rick lifted something from Morty’s face.

  
He held a small, deformed, bleeding white ball in front of Morty’s remaining eye.

  
“You like it?” He slurred at the fourteen-year-old, and  Morty registered with disgust and pure hatred burning through him was that Rick was drunk.

  
Rick performed a botched enucleation on his fourteen-year-old grandson drunk off his daughter’s wine and was now proudly displayed the disfigured eye he had dug out of Morty’s face.

  
Morty stopped screaming, and started sobbing.

  
He heaved in giant breathes, nearly unable to force the air in and out as he looked at Rick in horror, saw his demented smirk. Then, to his embarrassment, he started crying out of his remaining eye.

  
Rick rolled his eyes in response, throwing the misshapen organ over his shoulder haphazardly. “Whoever programmed your guilting functions really needs to update their coding skills.” He put down the bloodied scalpel and curette onto the metal table with a clang, while Morty’s sobs filled the room.

  
“Now,” Rick rubbed his bloody, gloved hands together villainously, “time to find out who made you.”

  
His fingers dipped into Morty’s eye socket. The boy himself had stopped thrashing around, too exhausted and traumatized to do anything but suck in breath after breath, sweat pouring over him. He felt the fingers dipping into that part of his face but it only felt like some dull pain, settling in the back of his mind as shock took over.

  
And then, Rick paused. He couldn't find any machinery.

  
“Where is it?!” Rick whispered frantically, his fingers starting to shake as he searched for the wires that would undoubtedly be hiding underneath Morty’s eye. They had to be there. Where were they?

  
His fingers shook as he searched, growing desperate while the squelches of Morty’s charred and torn flesh filled the air.

  
Slowly, as his head was being jerked around violently, Morty felt his left eye closing in response to his physical and mental exhaustion. For a moment, he thought Rick might be taking the other one with him, just another souvenir for his sociopathic travels, before Morty finally passed out.

  
Rick, however, was having a panic attack.

  
There were no wires. There was just flesh. Blood and flesh and blood and bones and blood. There was no wires, no circuitry. No level of robotics went this deep. Rick was centimeters from piercing Morty's brain, and there were no wires.

  
Morty was real. Morty was human.

  
Morty was his grandson.

  
Morty was now missing an eye, and looking like he was about to die. Blood was flowing out of the gaping wound on his face, dripping onto the table and hitting the floor. The gaping wound Rick had caused.

  
Rick flew back, stumbling away from the immobile boy, head lolled to the side. Rick hit his desk as his skittered away from the surgical table as realization came down hard.   

  
He had just tortured his grandson. His very much human, non-robotic grandson.

  
Bile rose in his throat, and Rick found himself vomiting profusely, sick getting all over the ground as he turned cold, as hysteria and terror settled into his body.

  
“God, oh g _ooooood_ ,” he moaned out, wiping away bile from his mouth. “Oh, god, Morty…” the boy in question did not react to his name being called. He simply stayed where he was, unconscious and bleeding out.

  
Rick’s rational mind worked at full-force, grief and guilt forcing him to seek out possibilities. How could he fix this? What could he do?

  
There was only one option. Morty could never forgive him for this.

  
He rose quickly, long arms and legs jerking around as he tried to control his movements and get himself around to what he needed. He grabbed his portal gun and interdimensional goggles and shoved them into his lab coat pockets, knocking things off his shelf as he moved the items around. They clattered to the floor, Rick uncaringly stumbling around the garage to take what he needed.

  
Next, he looked regretfully at the broken Mort sitting on the slab. It wasn’t likely he’d live anyway, Rick justified to himself. After what he had done to Morty, he’d probably die quietly sometime in the next few hours.

  
So, without guilt, he started to pour the gasoline around the garage.

  
He led a trail into the house, all around the kitchen and along the walls of the living room. He didn’t bother going upstairs, but sloshed the liquid all around the front hallway and against the door. Once the 5-gallon can was empty, Rick tossed it. He considered going back to the garage, apologizing Morty, telling him he trusted him now, things could go back. Back to how they used to be, when Morty was just small and clever, and Rick was happy and secure. Before his paranoia had taken over and ruined both of their lives.  

  
He started walking towards the door, feet moving in what might’ve been a trance. He was so close, a few feet from the garage door now. It would be so easy…

  
And the he heard something.

  
A clatter coming from the garage, something being knocked over. Morty must’ve woken up. Rick froze. He didn’t know what to do.

  
“ _Rrrrrick…_ ” came a low groan from behind the door, from what could only be Morty. Rick lifted his hand, reaching slowly towards the door knob. So close, so very close.

  
“Where are you?!” Came a shout from inside, the voice gaining power as he began to realize he was alone. It wasn’t the desperate cry of a child for his grandfather, it was the yell of a man out for blood.

  
“Where are you, Rick?!” The thrashing noises started again, and it sounded like something else had hit the ground. “I’ll fucking kill you, you bastard! Where are you?! What did you do to me?!”

  
Rick stopped, and then he knew.

  
He could never go back.

  
He grabbed a pack of matches from a drawer in the kitchen, and lit one. He watched the flame for a moment as Morty’s yells grew.

  
“I’ll fucking kill you! I’ll fucking kill you! Where are you?! WHERE ARE YOU?!”

  
Rick brought the match down to the largest puddle of gasoline on the ground, and it lit instantly. He didn’t stay to watch the flames grow, over take the house and Morty with it.

  
He couldn’t stand another minute of Morty’s betrayed, enraged screams ripping into him. Instead he walked outside, where Morty’s yells became duller, muffled through walls.

  
_I’llfuckingkillyouforthiscomehereandfacemeyousonofabitchI’llfuckingkillyou_

  
Rick shot a portal without caring where it might take him. He just stepped through.

 


	2. Part Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> its finally fucking complete
> 
> also i wrote this in like one day while listening exclusively to nicki minaj
> 
> morty begins his revenge

 

 

 

 

The flames reached Morty in the garage within minutes. He was still restrained onto the table.

Great. So now, not only was he in immense pain, shock coursing throughout his body, brain throbbing against his skull and hatred boiling his blood, he was also about to be burned to death.

Oh, and his psychotic grandfather had just cut his eye out of his face.

Morty twisted his wrists around the bonds, but to no avail. He was just as restricted as he had been before. The metal clamps still kept him firmly against the table. His ankles had been freed, apparently they hadn’t been as strong as the ones keeping his hands down. But he couldn’t do more than kick the surgical table over, sending scalpels and tools tumbling to the ground. Just great. Morty’s genius couldn’t help him now.

And then, just as the fire lit up the garage door, sending a wave of heat into Morty’s face, a glowing green portal appeared.

Morty tried to lift his pounding head off of the table, but struggled to meet the gaze of the figure who stepped through.

It was Rick. He came back.

As Morty looked at the vision of his grandfather, portal gun in hand as he looked at Morty, the boy realized he was wrong.

It was Rick, but it wasn't his Rick.

The figure looked more roughened than his Rick, deep-set bags under his eyes. He tucked his portal gun into the waistband of his pants, over his black shirt.

Moving quickly, this Rick found the remote control that had fallen to the ground and pressed one of the buttons, releasing Morty in an instant from his bounds.

He dropped the remote when Morty started to sit up, but by then the flames had moved closer, overtaking the wall.

“We need to leave,” the Rick said in a gruff voice, gathering Morty by his lifeless limbs. Cradling him to his chest, the not-Rick carried him out of the burning garage and through the portal.

Morty looked up at his savior who was both his grandfather and not his grandfather. There were slight differences, a slighter tanner skin tone, a deep scar over the right side of his lips.

This Rick was leading him throughout some metal hallways, which Morty could recognize the design in. It was alien technology, it almost looked Zigerion. Morty looked as they passed by a window and realized they weren’t in a building, but a space ship.

The both Rick-and-Not-Rick set him down carefully onto what could’ve been a bed. It was comfortable, but not a mattress, distinctly metal. A surge of panic went through Morty as he thought it might be another operating table.

But he wasn’t bound. Though exhaustion weighed him down and pain thudded dully in his head, Morty could move.

Rick arranged his arms and legs on the bench gingerly, obviously aware of his injuries and trauma. Once he was done, he left and walked out of the room.

Morty shut his eye and relaxed his neck as he leaned back. Though he didn’t trust this Rick and didn’t know his motivations, there wasn’t much he could do right now, as his physical disadvantageous were staggering.

The Rick returned a few moments later, lab coat over his arm and some sort of kit in his hand. Morty looked at him once he heard the door opening. It was weird to see a Rick in that black shirt, he was so used to Rick’s seemingly only outfit of lab coat and blue sweater.

He knelt down besides Morty and opened up the kit, which Morty realized was some sort of advanced first aid. He pulled out a small needle and brought it up to Morty’s face. Unconsciously, Morty flinched back and reared his head away from the needle.

This Rick frowned, but seemed to understand Morty’s trepidation.

“Relax,” he said soothingly, and brought his free hand to the side of Morty’s face, probably to keep him still. But the hand was there delicately, a suggestion more than a demand. Morty realized he had no choice, and kept his head still.

The needle descended to the side of his face, a plunged just below the opening of his missing eye. Though the intrusion hurt, once whatever drug it was was in his system, Morty felt all the pain leave.

All the pain his original Rick inflicted on him started to fade, and he felt normal. Still tired, but normal. This Rick continued to work away, cleaning up the wound and dressing it.

He still acted a little like Morty’s Rick though. He mumbled out small notes as he placed the bandage over half of Morty’s face, but also gave him small comforts to Morty.

“I don’t have the tools on-hand to build your new eye, but I’ll make a stop soon,” he mumbled out, adding the finishing touches.

Rick placed the last of the tools away into the first aid kit and stood up, about to leave again.

But the words did little to comfort the weary Morty, who still looked up at this Rick with distrust, albeit with one eye. There wasn’t anyway he could look at this Rick and not see his own.

“Why?” He croaked at the Rick’s back just before he managed to reach the door. He turned slowly, meeting Morty’s gaze.

“Get some rest, I’ll check on you in a few hours.” And then he turned around again and left, the doors sealing shut behind him.

Morty looked at the door for a few minutes, half expecting his Rick to come barreling through, drunk and slobbering all over him. He half-expected him to offer an insincere apology, then drag Morty by his exhausted limbs to another planet, another dangerous mission, another reality.

But no one came.

Unsure if that made him happy or sad, Morty finally shut his remaining eye and allowed himself to drift off into a dreamless sleep.

///

Where was he?

It took Morty approximately nine seconds to remember everything that had happened to him the past day. From the drugging, to the torture, to the abandonment, to the near-death, and then the still unexplained rescue.

He got up slowly off the metal bench, groggy but no longer in pain. In fact, all of the pain was gone. Morty tested his eye, poking his finger onto the bandage. Though he could still feel the deep gash underneath the gauze, no pain shocked throughout him. Those drugs must be strong, he thought to himself.

He got up slowly, taking in his surroundings. He was still on a spaceship, as he looked out a window and saw stars passing by slowly, like street lights on a car ride.

The room he was in was small, with one door. Walking over to it he wondered if it would require some key or identification to open, but was surprised to see it open automatically as he came near.

Stepping out cautiously, he looked down both sides of the hallway outside the door. The style continued on, simplistic and metal, with a few blinking electrical panels posted against a few of the walls.

Morty felt the urge to clutch at the edge of his yellow t-shirt, like he used to do when he was a kid and Rick would shove him into some new, nerve-wracking adventure. The small movement had ruined the ends of a fair few of Morty’s shirts but it gave the boy a small degree of comfort, something he treasured.

But he rejected this urge and started walking down the halls, his stance echoing a confidence Morty had never had. At least, it seemed like Morty was confident in his steps as he explored the spaceship slowly. It wasn’t confidence that fueled his movements, but an uncaring pit in his stomach. Nothing bad could truly happen to him anymore. He no longer kept fear in his heart, instead it had been cut out, another thing Rick had cut torn from him. In it's place a cold apathy for his own well being settled over him, chilling his body.

He continued down the hallway, following a steady beeping that came from behind one of the doors at the end.

He found Rick hunched over a monitor. The blue-haired man had thrown his lab coat across the room and was tinkering away at lightning speed, pressing glowing buttons and calibrating screens, using a vibrating rod to adjust dials.

Morty said nothing when he came into the room, but Rick looked up anyway. He grinned at him in an easy-going way, seeing the boy no longer curled up in pain.

Rick threw the buzzing tool he had in his hand over his shoulder in a way that was very reminiscent of Morty’s Rick, and stood up. He walked over to Morty, who watched him silently, and put a hand on his shoulder, turning him towards the door. Surprisingly, Morty didn’t flinch.

“Let's get you something to eat,” he told him jovially and even though Morty was more curious than he was hungry, he allowed himself to be led.

Rick brought him to another room that looked like all the other rooms, metal-plated with a faint humming of an engine in it, expect this one had cabinets and a table. A metal-plated table and metal-plated cabinets, but still. Rick dropped his hand from Morty’s shoulder and walked over to one, opening it and pulling out a box.

At first Morty thought it might be cereal, but when Rick opened it he pulled out a small rectangle that looked suspiciously like wood. He handed one to Morty, and then took another one out and bit into it, shoving the box back into the cabinet.

Morty took a bite out of the corner, more to appease Rick than anything else. It was tasteless, whatever it was, but Morty felt energy flow through him like a shot of caffeine, and his stomach started feeling full almost immediately.

“Why did you help me?” He asked Rick’s back. Rick froze, reaching into another cabinet, facing away from Morty. He put whatever he was looking at away and turned around, looking solemn.

Morty was suspicious. He didn’t trust this Rick at all. He didn’t care if he had saved his life, bandaged him and fed him. There was an ulterior motive, there had to be. No Rick would ever do something out of the kindness of his own heart. The last twenty-four hours had only reinforced this idea in his brain.

The Rick sighed and moved over to the table, gesturing for Morty to follow him. He did so, facing him as he took the seat on the other end.

Rick began telling a long-winded tale, from when he had first became a scientist and attempted inter-dimensional travel to finding the Council of Ricks and realizing just how endless the possibilities to his life there was. Morty found it strange to listen to him, not only by the long-winded life story but also because he didn’t hiccup or stutter once. He was unused to hearing Rick’s voice go on that long without a slight.

“I never got a Morty. That was the thing. Every single fucking Rick seemed to have a Morty and I never got one. And I realized that was hindering me.” Morty looked up sharply at that. Rick was no longer looking at him though, too engaged in his plot, hand gestures and voices raising.

“So I set out to find one. There had to be a few Morty’s out there that wouldn’t be missed, right? There had to be at least one without a Rick. I kept searching, and then I found you.” They made eye contact at that. Morty looked down at his food, wondering how he could get out of here if he needed to.

“The smartest Morty there is. Hell, probably the only Morty with more than two brain cells.” Morty took another bite out of his rectangle, not knowing how to respond.

“And I saw Rick. Crazy, paranoid, suspecting your every move. I knew how unstable he was, I knew eventually he’d snap. I wasn’t monitoring you yesterday though, and I got there too late to stop him from doing what he did. I’m sorry for that.”

Out of everything, that stunned Morty the most. He’d never heard an apology with Rick’s voice before. Even though he consciously knew this wasn’t his Rick, it still felt strange.

“So you wanted a smart Morty? For what? I can’t even block out your brain signals.” Morty pointed out, trying to keep the story going. He needed more answers.

Rick sighed again, hands resting on the table, “It’s partially loneliness, but mainly because I wanted to work with someone. I’ve been hitting a creative block for a while now and I needed someone with my equal levels of genius to help me.”

Rick suddenly got up. “Come on, I’ll show you the rest of the ship.”

///

It was expansive. Too large, Morty thought, for just one person. He didn’t doubt the truth in Rick’s statement when he said he was lonely. Floor after floor melted away as Rick showed him control room after control room, talking to him in a non-condescending way. He showed Morty how to steer, something Morty already knew how to do but didn’t voice. It was clear Rick thought he was a genius but he probably still thought he was smarter than Morty. He’d take any advantage he could get.

Morty did start to get a little more comfortable in the man’s presence though. His laid-back attitude and apparent basic empathy allowed Morty to gain a little confidence, walking along with Rick instead of being guided.

He started to walk through a door at the end of one of the lower hallways when he found it wouldn’t open. The control pad by the door beeped angrily at him when he pressed the unlock function and flashed red.

“You don’t need to go in there,” Rick said behind him, deep voice taking on a serious tone as he instructed Morty.

Morty thought fast as he lowered his hand from the control pad. He was right to have his suspicions, and now he had his confirmation. Whatever was in that room Rick didn’t want him to see, and that meant that Morty had to find out as soon as possible.

He turned around and faced Rick, letting a meek smile overtake his face.

 

“Okay, Rick,” he said.

///

The day ended (at least Morty felt like the day was ending, he felt a little tired but there were also no clocks anywhere on the ship) with Rick leading him to a room with a bed and a desk and a trash can overflowing with papers. He said it was his old workroom but he cleared it out for Morty.

Morty didn’t care but he thanked Rick for the gesture, smiling at his different-dimension relative.

Rick brought him a toolbox bigger larger than Morty’s body and slammed it down on the desk. He patted the top of it and told Morty, “Tomorrow we can start constructing a new eye for you.”

Morty lifted his hand to bandaged wound, which was still numb. His fingers danced along the edge of the bandage, a simmering rage boiling up inside him. The anger towards Rick had not left him, but he forced a kindhearted smile to appear on his face.

“Thank you, Rick. For everything. This has been great.” Even to Morty’s own ears, the gratitude sounded genuine.

The older man gave the boy a smile and patted his shoulder. “Of course, buddy.” He told him, then departed to let him get some sleep.

The doors automatically sealed behind Rick and Morty went and sat on the bed, counting patiently.

He started counting softly as he waited. First, he got to a hundred, then two, then three. Once he reached five hundred he figured he had waited long enough.

He padded over to the door, unlocking it easily over the control panel and slipping out. He walked softly down the hallway, looking over his shoulder cautiously as he made his way over to an elevator.

He’d already memorized where everything was on every floor, easily. He punched in a number and the elevator doors closed swiftly.

Once he arrived and peered out of the elevator to make sure the hallway was clear, Morty walked forward with purpose, making sure to not make noise as he entered one of the monitoring rooms. The room blinked with purpose, screens buzzing as they showcased empty hallways and rooms.

Morty sat down at the desk in front of the control panel, opening up a function query on the screen. He bypassed the security function that Rick had put in place easily. He thought it would a lot harder to get through the firewalls on something a Rick had made, but apparently this Rick wasn’t as smart as his old one. The thought made a smirk creep onto Morty’s face.

He gained control of the monitoring system easily and quickly scanned the ship for any kinds of life forms. As the search map was shown on the screen, Morty realized the whole ship was a large sphere, constructed like a dome.

The search finished and Morty looked as three different locations were blinking on the screen. The first he recognized, as it registered his own heat signature in the monitoring room. He didn’t linger.

The second was in a room four levels above him, near where Morty’s room had been. Morty moved to another screen and punched in the location, hoping there were cameras in the room. Thankfully there were, but the room was practically pitch black. Morty could barely make out the sleeping Rick on the left side of the room, illuminated by the light streaming in from the stars in the window.

Satisfied that Rick wouldn’t wake up, he turned to look at the last heat signature on the ship. It was larger than both Rick and Morty, and was coming from the last level of the ship on the bottom. Morty didn’t bother to pull up a security feed, knowing there’d be no cameras in that room. It was the room Rick had tried to keep him out of.

He exited the tab he’d opened and got up from the chair, walking out of the room.

He knew what he had to do.

He made his way back to the elevator and pressed the floor he wanted. Once it opened up to the significantly darker hallway. The ominous lighting barely affected Morty though as he made his way down to the end of the hallway.

He stopped in front of the doorway, the lock pad off to the side beeping sleepily at him. Morty gave it an unimpressed look before ripping the exterior box off of it, exposing the wiring and circuit board. He worked quickly, unconnecting the unimportant wires and bypassing the function to open the door.

Ripping the last wire out, the door opened instantly and Morty dropped the outer panel, making a dull clang echo throughout the hallway. Inside the room, a series of familiar moans greeted him.

Curiosity peaked, Morty stepped into the room, the groans of pain growing louder.

Inside, there were Mortys.

A long line of Mortys, strapped down to a long line of tables. Most were shirtless, some with their shirts torn to shreds.

Morty stepped into the room and watched as a few glanced over at him in agonized hope. They all had a contraption over them, poking into their stomachs and making them cry out in pain. Another device, a kind of electronic crown was hooked up to all of their head, connected together to a large satellite that was hanging near the ceiling, swinging slowly.

As the pain-filled Mortys cried out to him and begged him for help, Morty had realization dawn over him. So this was why Rick didn’t need him for his brain waves. He had more than enough Mortys to cancel out both Rick’s and his combined signals.

Morty let a scowl develop on his face as he walked out of the room, putting the panel back in place and ignoring the desperate screams of the other Mortys.

He walked down the hallway angrily, a new truth burned into his mind.

No Rick could ever care about a Morty.

///

Morty did not fall asleep when he got back to his room, but instead laid down on his bed and stared up at the ceiling with his one eye.

He stared up and his mind swirled as plan after plan started to develop in his brain, from escape routes to revenge theme. He felt that steaming hot rage swirling around in his stomach, making his almost shake as his fists clenched. Morty knew what he had to do.

When he heard Rick’s steady feet making their way down the hallway hours later, Morty closed his eye and steadied his breathing. The door slid open and light streamed into the room.

Rick apparently paused to look at Morty’s sleeping form as he said nothing for a moment. Then, after he finished pausing, he switched the light on.

Morty let his eye open slowly and blinked up at Rick, whose scarred mouth smiled at him warmly. Morty hated him for it.

“Up and a ‘em.” the older man said, tossing Morty another one of those food bars. Morty got up slowly, picking up the bar from where it had fallen on his stomach.

“You wanna get to work today?” Rick asked him, turning away to open up the toolbox and rifle through it. Morty got off the bed and placed the bar down back on the bed, unable to conjure up even the imitation of hunger.

Rick turned around and grinned at him, having no reason to suspect that even the slightest thing was amiss. Morty made his lips pull into a smile.

Rick had pulled out a few parts and was messing with them. He moved over to the bed and sat on it, tinkering away while half-paying attention. He started talking about how they could give Morty a new eye with x-ray vision or the ability to shoot lasers as Morty looked into the toolbox.

There were a few tools that Morty didn’t recognize and many that he did, the one that stood out the most being the large and heavy-looking wrench sitting under a Meeseeks box.

Morty reached his small hand into the toolbox and pulled out the wrench slowly. It was heavy in his hand, but his whole arm vibrated with adrenaline in a way that fueled all of his energy, a red tint starting to take over his vision.

“This will do.” He said softly in a voice that was not entirely his own.

“What do you mea-” Rick’s voice was cut off by Morty swinging the wrench around and slamming it against Rick’s temple.

Blood spurted out of the hit as Rick went down, knocked off the bed and landing on the ground.

A groan came out of him as he tried to sit up, looking up at Morty in confusion as blood started to trickle out of the gash.

“What the f-f-fuck?” He moaned in a scratchy voice.

Morty smiled.

“There’s that stutter.”

He brought the wrench down again, knocking Rick’s chest to the ground. He was unrelenting as he brought the tool-turned-weapon against the man’s head, until Rick’s pained protests faded and he lay unmoving on the ground.

Morty avoided hitting the eyes.

///

Rick woke up hours later strapped to a table with a pounding headache.

Mainly because Morty had removed most of his skull, exposing his brain and had given his no anesthesia.

Morty was sitting at a work table nearby, putting together a small receiver. He looked up when he saw Rick struggling against his bonds, blood dripping out of his head. The irony was not lost on Morty as he smiled at the man on the torture table.

“I was going to just use an eye from one of those Mortys you very conveniently have locked up in your basement,” He told him, making Rick’s head tilt over to look at him with wide eyes. Morty smirked, “but I figured it would be more poetic to construct a new one for me out of yours.”

The Rick in a black shirt started wheezing, protesting in short breaths as he looked at the boy in horror. Morty’s smirk deepened.

He got to work immediately, not one to waste time.

All things considered, removing an eye is a fairly quick procedure. Morty figured that his Rick was just extra sadistic as he had mangled and scooped around Morty’s eye, spending hours going to town.

Morty was more precise. He held open Rick’s eye with a clamp and when he started to struggle against him Morty didn’t hold him down. He just cut into his brain and got rid of all his motor functions.

Rick’s eyes stayed still but they stared up at Morty and he felt satisfaction surge through his at the power change. Though he knew that this was not his Rick and that this short-lived revenge was not the one he craved, it made him smile nonetheless.

Once Rick’s eye was removed, Morty got to work quickly. He cut into the white organ and put his own mechanics inside, watching as the small motor started working, making the eye twist around.

He briefly wondered it the eye would fit, but realized he didn’t care.

Morty peeled off the bandage around his eye and found the numbing agent still worked, to his satisfaction. The healing over the cut had barely begun so he was able to easily shove his fingers into his eye socket and move his slowly-healing lids out of the way.

Using his other hand, he shoved the cyborg eye into the socket, which made a sickening plop as it fit into place. Morty felt the eye swirling around independently for a moment before it centered.

It took a few minutes and a lot of blinking before the receiver in the mechanics hooked up to his brain signal and he started to regain vision in his eye.

Teeth exposed in a large grin, he made eye contact with the one-eyed Rick felt sick pleasure at the image.

“Now, where do you keep your portal gun?”

///

Finding his own Rick was easy enough. The Rick in this universe didn’t use goggles to look at other dimensions but instead used a monitoring system hooked up to a computer in the wall. It was surprisingly easy to figure out the dimension his Rick went to.

He shot a portal into the wall and walked out into dimension C-137, landing on the mirror image of the street he grew up on.

He walked slowly towards his own house, pristine and not burned down as his original one was.

What was he going to do? Ambush Rick? Threaten him? What could he even do? Rick could overpower him easily, even with all the hatred that fueled him against the man.

“Aww, c-c-c’mon, Rick!” Morty heard.

Knowing the familiar voice and who it was talking to, he moved over to the neighbor’s yard, crouching behind the bushes. He watched as his double and his original Rick stepped out of the garage.  
It seemed almost impossible, how much pure disgust filled Morty as he watched his grandfather interact with the gangly, awkward version of himself.

Morty wondered if his Rick chose a dumb version of him on purpose.

Just killing Rick wouldn’t be enough. He had to destroy him. He had to take everything away from him. He wanted to destroy not only this Rick, but every single Rick there ever was.

Another plan forming his head, Morty shot another portal and went back onto the ship.

The first thing he would need to choose is a spot to hide.

///

While landing the large dome shaped spaceship in the outer reaches of the universe. He choose a swamp planet with a bug-like population and got to work.

By the time he had finished parking the bulbous ship he didn’t even know if Rick was alive or just paralyzed anymore but he didn’t bother to check. He was of no use to Morty anymore. Though, he did make him virtually undetectable with his use of the tortured Morty’s. But he knew that even with that small amount of protection it soon wouldn’t be enough.

He had to get to work.

The first thing he had to do was construct a bodyguard.

While it might have been in small parts because having someone around to do all of the physical labour and get shot before Morty did was practical, it was also because Morty got a sick enjoyment out of being able to control something with Rick’s face.

He still had the old body of the Rick with him which he used for scale purposes and then went about constructing the AI system inside the android, giving it a language function. He managed to recover some memories and functions from this universe’s Rick’s brain, which he implemented.

It would be easier to just pretend he was the Rick from this universe, so Morty gave him that same scar on his mouth. The appearance had been easy.

The harder part was constructing the remote control that would have to be connected to Morty’s eye, which could be concealed.

But it also meant he made to keep taking his artificial eye out over and over again to make adjustments. But robotics had always been Morty’s strong suit, so he kept at it. Once the controller was built, he hooked it up to the receiver in his false eye so it could directly transmit his brain waves. The only time he’d had to go off-planet was to buy an eyepatch he could attach the receiver to.

In fact, the only time he had taken a break was when he realized that the lower levels of the ship had started growing vegetation.

He had gone down there to check on the Morty’s that were still locked up and hooked up to the machine when he saw that a lot of the doors had been busted open. Dirt and plants had tumbled in, taking root on the ground.

He was going to shrug and go back upstairs when he saw that some of the planet’s dominant species was scuttling by.

The purple-lobster looking aliens seemed to not care about the large dome that had landed on their planet months ago. They just continued moving around it, essentially ignoring it.

For a moment Morty looked at them, and then he grinned.

What mortal enemy of Rick would be complete without henchmen?

///

The lobster-race were easy to control since they all had a hive mind. Morty simply infiltrated the cave where their queen lived and overtook her brain with a steel rod then used a jamming device to cancel out her brain waves. After that, imitating the queen’s signals was a piece of cake. He made the signal booster out of a toaster.

He would have sent in his robot-Rick to do it, but it was just too much fun.

The lobster-race were very skilled workers, even if they did make weird noises every ten seconds. As time went on they became even more obedient, and Morty felt the power in him swe;; as he managed to command an entire species.

They protected the spaceship, building giant spikes around the base to both intimidate people away and actually stab someone if they got too close.

The plan was going perfectly. Morty spent months trying to find out where the Council of Ricks was and when he finally found it, it was astonishingly easy to get in.

The Ricks didn’t even question another pair walking around the Citadel, simply walking past them as if they had always been there.

It was even easier to find out the laws the Council of Ricks carried out, and Morty felt happiness roll over him when he saw their punishments of torture and murder.

He headed back to the dome and started working on the second phase of his plan.

He had gotten rid of the torture room for the Mortys, instead stuffing them into a prison cell together, where they’d been for months. Every now and then Morty remembered to give them food and water.

But he needed more. If he was going to work with all of the brain power he planned on using, he’d need to not only frame Rick for murder but to capture as many Mortys as possible.

That took little time at all. With his robot-Rick by his side, the Mortys were laughably easy to kidnap. Then again, almost every Morty was an idiot. But Morty was careful. He only took the ones that didn’t have a Rick, not wanting to deal with any kind of drunken revenge plots.

Setting up the Morty-Torture-Shield took time, but ultimately paid off as it added so many extra levels of protection. It would only take a desperate Rick to reach him.

Just what he was counting on.

The dome was set up, his henchmen would die for him, and the robot-Rick followed him without fail, not a single glitch in him.

Morty was ready.

He tried not to smile too much when he got to kill the first Rick.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thnx for reading!!


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